I think it is way beyond time for a re-write and update of The Constitution of the United States of America.
Most of us want a change in how government works. Even the founders thought it was a good idea to revisit the basis of our government occasionally, with Thomas Jefferson saying “Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years” – and it is far overdue.
Now, I am not suggesting we scrap the whole thing and start completely over – not by a long shot. I am suggesting that we update the official document of our Democratic Republic. We need to modernize and clarify the language to something that most modern people can easily comprehend the meaning of. We need to remove ambiguity and open-interpretation that plagues our modern politics with arguments over what an article means or says. And, finally, we need to condense it. There have been a lot of laws passed that edit this line or revoke that section – It takes a scholar to keep track of it all.
We need The United States Constitution 2.0
There has already been a digital book written with a proposal – which I am working on reading – by Robert G. Butler. Though, within three pages he has espoused language that I find unsatisfactory. So, I stopped reading when it started leaning toward christo-fascism.
A prime example is the fact that the Constitution prohibits a standing army – one of the reasons we have been at war for 200 years. Congress has to re-appropriate funds every year or so to keep the military funded and authorized. We were supposed to only have state militias – well trained and disciplined – to call up in case of war or a needed ‘military action.’ Well, that just isn’t the reality any more. I think it is time we face the reality of a standing army and put it in the Constitution. The military is our biggest employer, one of our most sacred institutions – and it is wholly unconstitutional.
We also have archaic voting laws and systems that we need to review and adjust to modern times. The 3/5ths compromise needs to be fully removed – and not just with an amendment 400 pages in that says “strike this line in the is paragraph, in this article.” We need to scrub all remnants of slavery and racial discrimination from our governing document. We don’t need to forget the past – we can put in provisions for keeping the original document on display and available to the public and taught in school, etc. – but we need to move past it.
We need to protect the most-mentioned citizenship right – voting. Which means putting in protections against gerrymandering, voter suppression, corporate control, etc. We can also put in measures to move voting into our modern times – with secured online voting – like accessing the Social Security website, it will be Multi-Factor authentication for sign-in. Ranked Choice voting is also an imperative, I think.
Speaking of corporations – I think this is one area where we need to go back to more original wording and law. You see, for most of the early years, corporations were tightly controlled. They had to re-apply for corporation status every few years and prove that their existence was in the public interest. I sincerely believe we need to get back to something closer to that, than the mess we have right now.
– see – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_corporate_law_in_the_United_States, https://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate-accountability-history-corporations-us/ and for an in-depth dive, https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1605&context=lcp
It now appears that we will also need to clarify our unalienable rights a bit more – to make sure that women will not be forced into slavery to a clump of cells or potential person if they have sex or get pregnant. We can’t force someone to donate blood or organs, even to save another’s life – so why should states be able to force a woman to donate their entire body, blood, nutrients, oxygen, etc, to sustain a potential life growing inside her?
Please, join me in working toward this – comment and maybe we can start a google Docs draft of this re-write.
Thomas Jefferson even touted the necessity of changes to the Constitution by latter generations: “We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”
There are others feeling the same way – https://usawire.com/constitution-2-0/ ; https://opensource.com/government/13/9/us-constitution-version-2.0 ; https://riverasun.com/constitution-2-0/ ; https://njsbf.org/2019/01/08/does-the-u-s-constitution-need-a-re-write/ ; https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2022/sep/11/we-the-people-is-it-time-to-rewrite-the-us-constit/ ; https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/01/08/scalia-was-right-make-amending-the-constitution-easier-526780 ; https://www.npr.org/2011/12/10/143354018/reconstituting-the-constitution-how-to-rewrite-it
— work in progress — this post is unfinished